Tag Archives: Peyton Manning

November 11, 2012

Two stats suggest Broncos growing into legit contender

Five weeks ago, the Broncos were 2-3 and ranked 19th in the NFL in points allowed. Peyton Manning and the offense were coming together, week by week, but the Broncos had all kinds of questions on the other side of the ball. Having surrendered 62 points to Houston and New England over the previous three weeks, their defense scared no one.

Sunday, the Broncos won their fourth consecutive game since then. For the first time, Manning was not the main reason. The Denver defense, which had improved to 13th in points allowed in the interim, dominated Carolina, forcing Cam Newton to run for his life most of the day.

Two stats best reflected this defensive dominance:

— Seven quarterback sacks by six different Broncos defenders, the first time they’ve had that many in a game in nine years.

— The Panthers’ astonishing 0-for-12 success rate on third down, the first time the Broncos have shut out an opponent on third down in 12 years.

Jack Del Rio’s unit had improved from 29th to 20th in third-down defense over the past three weeks, and that ranking will rise again when all of this weekend’s action is over.

Combine a stifling defense that held Carolina to 250 yards of offense (the Broncos had 360) with another kick return for a touchdown by Trindon Holliday — a kickoff last week in Cincinnati, a punt this week in Carolina — and the Broncos resembled, for the first time, a complete team that could be a legitimate championship contender.

“It was a heck of an effort by the defense today,” Manning told KOA afterward. “They really put a lot of pressure on Carolina’s offense. And, boy, that’s two straight weeks with a (special teams) return for a touchdown. Just can’t tell you what that does for a team. Just a huge swing. Holliday and the entire return team has done a heck of a job. So, good overall team win. Offensively, obviously, some things we need to do better, but it sure was a good win.”

This is the key intangible the Broncos have going for them — veterans on both sides of the ball who are dissatisfied after a convincing 36-14 road win.

Asked by Channel 4’s Gary Miller if the defense was coming along faster than he expected, cornerback Champ Bailey did not hesitate.

“No,” he said. “I think we’re going too slow. We need to pick it up a little bit.”

It sounded like a joke, but if you know Bailey, who held the great Panthers receiver Steve Smith to one catch on seven targets for 19 yards, you know it wasn’t. At 34, Bailey’s sense of urgency to get to his first Super Bowl is palpable.

Similarly, Manning returns to Denver determined to work on flaws in the offense.

“I thought we were close on offense all day and really had some chances to put some more points and maybe have a little more separation,” he said. “We still had a few self-inflicted wounds. I’ve learned never to take winning for granted in the NFL, but certainly some things we can improve on and hopefully correct on offense.”

Even on a relatively modest day for Manning — he completed 27 of 38 passes for 301 yards, one touchdown and a passer rating of 103.1 — the Broncos’ quarterback continued his assault on the record book. The touchdown tied Dan Marino for second on the career list at 420. Only Brett Favre, with 508, had more. The win tied him with Marino for third on that list with 147, behind only John Elway (148) and Favre (186).

Now in charge of the Broncos’ front office, Elway gets appropriate credit for courting and signing Manning, giving the franchise instant credibility on offense. The front office he leads has continued to add veteran pieces that have played major roles, among them linebacker Keith Brooking, center Dan Koppen and safety Jim Leonhard.

But no pickup on the fly has had a bigger impact than Holliday, just the third player in Broncos history to return both a kickoff and a punt for touchdowns in the same season, joining Al Frazier in 1961 and Eddie Royal in 2009. The Broncos claimed him off waivers from Houston last month.

“We look at the wire every single day to see who’s on that wire and if there’s a possibility that we can improve our football team,” Elway said on the Dave Logan Show last week.

“When we had a chance to get Trindon Holliday and claimed him a couple weeks ago, it was key for us because we needed a returner and he’d had so much success in preseason and even earlier this season . . . It was kind of an area of need and we saw what he could do last week. He’s really upgraded our return game.”

Holliday’s 76-yard punt return on the first play of the second quarter broke a 7-7 tie. Returners with the ability to break one at any time are a rare breed and provide a dimension that few teams have. To add that, in midseason, to improving units on offense and defense, makes the Broncos a threat to score in all three phases of the game, as they did Sunday.

“Especially a guy with that kind of speed,” Elway said. “If we can get people on people and get him some space, then he’s going to be very dangerous and it puts that much pressure on the other team. We really can look at it as another offensive weapon that when we do get in the return game, we have the ability to make some big plays.”

Indeed, the 5-foot-5-inch, 170-pound Holliday has been so impressive the Broncos are working him into the passing game. In Carolina, he had his first two NFL catches.

On the other hand, replays appeared to show Holliday flipping the ball away before crossing the goal line on the punt return. Neither the officials nor the Panthers noticed. Broncos coach John Fox told him to bring him the ball next time.

Meanwhile, Von Miller continued his ascent into one of the dominant defensive players in the league. Although he got credit for just one of the Broncos’ sacks after registering three the week before, he seemed to be in the Carolina backfield all day. He denied any special motivation going after the one player picked ahead of him in the 2011 NFL draft, but his teammates knew better.

“It was important not only for our head coach coming back here, but the first time Von has gone up against Cam,” said fellow linebacker Wesley Woodyard. “So it was exciting for him.”

Fox, of course, coached the Panthers for nine seasons and was less than thrilled when he was set up to fail with a stripped-down roster in his final season. But Fox, like Miller, declined to talk about his motivation publicly.

Broncos defenders credited with quarterback sacks in addition to Miller were defensive linemen Kevin Vickerson (two), Robert Ayers and Elvis Dumervil; and defensive backs Mike Adams and Chris Harris.

About the only negative for the Broncos was the running game, which put up only 65 yards, averaging three yards per rush. The starter, Willis McGahee, fumbled twice. Luckily, one rolled back to him. The other became his third lost fumble of the season.

Still, their turnover ratio continued to improve from a horrible start with interceptions by cornerback Tony Carter — a third-quarter pick six that extended the lead to 24-7 — and safety Rahim Moore. They improved to minus three on the season.

Combined with the Chargers’ loss to Tampa Bay, the Broncos’ fourth straight victory gave them a two-game lead in the AFC West with a chance to make it effectively four by beating San Diego next week and sweeping the head-to-head matchups, the first tie-breaker.

“It’s certainly a big game, and we all know how the game went last time,” Manning said, referring to the turning point of the Broncos’ season so far. It came at halftime of the game in San Diego on Oct. 15. The Chargers led 24-0 and the Broncos were 30 minutes from falling to 2-4. Instead, they came back with 35 second-half points and haven’t lost since.

“Everybody talks about the comeback, but we were down 24-0 for a reason, because they are a good team and they forced us into some mistakes,” Manning said. “So we’re going to have to play a whole lot better than we did last time . . . We need a good week of practice.”

Now 6-3 on the season, the Broncos’ record is beginning to reflect the quality of their game. One memorable stat that made the rounds last spring, just after Manning signed, seems increasingly relevant these days. Throughout his career, Manning’s teams have averaged 26 points a game. Throughout his career, Fox’s defensively-oriented teams have won more than 90 percent of the time when they score at least 26 points.

It’s working so far. When the Broncos have scored 26 points or more this season, they are 6-0. If the defense continues to improve at its recent rate, they could be as scary as any team when the playoffs get underway.

Leave a comment | tags: Champ Bailey, Jack Del Rio, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Trindon Holliday | posted in Broncos/NFL

November 4, 2012

This just in: Peyton Manning is not a cyborg

By Dave Krieger

Remember the ad with Albert Pujols where ESPN anchors call him by his nickname, The Machine, and his inner robot offers him the options of denying the allegation or eliminating the allegators?

When he chooses to deny, his inner robot asks in a Hal-like voice, “Why didn’t you eliminate them, Albert?”

The way the two players have performed since, Pujols ought to surrender the name to Peyton Manning. For weeks now, Manning has resembled nothing so much as a football-savant cyborg with a microprocessor just a little bit faster than anyone else’s and the robotic physical skill to execute its commands.

So it was almost reassuring to see him make a couple of mistakes Sunday in Cincinnati. Robots have come to surgery already, but not yet to sports.

Manning’s mistakes also allowed the Broncos to keep developing as a contender by overcoming a little adversity on the road, requiring another fourth-quarter comeback (Manning’s 48th). For good teams, such tests are mile markers of their progress.

In their third consecutive win, a 31-23 decision over the Bengals that left them with a record of 5-3 at the season’s halfway mark, the Broncos continued to hone a dynamic combination of elite veteran leadership and impressive, improving young talent.

In the area of veteran leadership, you don’t do better than Manning on offense and Champ Bailey on defense. If anyone in that locker room is inclined toward giddiness, they are swiftly corrected.

In the area of emerging young talent, the offense is benefiting from Manning’s increased confidence in receivers Eric Decker (eight catches, 99 yards, two touchdowns) and Demaryius Thomas (six catches, 77 yards).

The defense is benefiting from Von Miller, the outstanding second-year pass rusher who added three sacks to his previous six; Wesley Woodyard, the replacement for the suspended D.J. Williams who was in on 14 tackles; and Chris Harris and Tony Carter, unheralded defensive backs who have done a better job covering NFL receivers than a series of bigger names brought in over the years to help Bailey out.

“We had great coverage,” Miller said, sharing the credit for his sacks. “Chris Harris, Champ Bailey, Rahim Moore, all those guys had great games. They were able to give us time to rush the passer. And whenever you can get time to do your job, we’ve got to get there, and that’s what we did today.”

Remarkably, Manning was not sacked all day by a Cincinnati pass rush that led the AFC with 23 going into the game. Part of it was due to the offensive line, which lost guard Chris Kuper again to a reinjured left ankle, part of it to Manning for getting rid of the ball quickly, and part of it to the Broncos’ receiver corps, which got open fast enough to give Manning early targets.

The Broncos front office under John Elway has also made a number of key veteran acquisitions now contributing in bigger ways than may have been anticipated. Keith Brooking, imported at age 36 to see if he could add a little depth and leadership to the linebacking corps, is now the middle linebacker in the base defense. Dan Koppen, picked up after New England cut him, is now the starting center. Jim Leonhard is getting more time at safety.

And Trindon Holliday, the speedster the Broncos claimed off waivers from Houston last month, made the longest play in franchise history, a 105-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to open the second half.

The Broncos were on their way to a second consecutive comfortable win when Manning made his first mistake. Holliday’s return of the second half kickoff made it 17-3. The Bengals responded with their first touchdown, the big play a 52-yard reception by wide-open tight end Jermaine Gresham.

The Broncos marched right back down the field in that methodical way Manning had led them over the previous five weeks, when he totaled 14 touchdown passes and one interception (and even that, a misread on a hot route by receiver Matt Willis, wasn’t Manning’s fault). After driving from their own 17 to the Bengals’ 9-yard line, the Broncos looked poised to restore their two-touchdown advantage.

If Manning throws his pass into the end zone a foot or two to the right, it might have been caught by Decker rather than Bengals cornerback Terence Newman. That would have made the score 24-10. Instead, when the Bengals turned the turnover into a field goal, the Broncos’ lead was only 17-13. It wasn’t immediately obvious whose fault that first pick was — Manning’s for leading Decker a sliver too much, or Decker for letting the smaller Newman keep him from getting to his spot. Tony Dungy, Manning’s former coach, said on NBC that Manning and Decker would be watching the video on the flight home to correct whatever the problem was.

The second Newman interception, on Manning’s very next pass, from his own 3-yard line, overshot Decker, and Manning took responsibility.

“Obviously, the interception, the second one to Newman, was a poor decision on my part,” he told KOA. “I just can’t give them that kind of field position, put our defense in a tough bind. So that was a disappointing decision on my part. But offensively we responded.”

One thing you can say for Manning — interceptions don’t chasten him in the least. He keeps heaving it, and his completion rate remains spectacular. Despite the mistakes, he ended up with more touchdowns than interceptions in Cincinnati.

“My father always talked about level zero, get back to level zero,” he told reporters afterward. “You’ve got to erase the play from your mind, a good play or a bad play, and move on to the next one. So, not the scenario that we wanted, anytime you’re on the road and you have a chance to put a team away, you’d like to. You hate to give them a little life, which we did. And give credit to them for responding. But when we had to, our team responded as well, and that was important.”

The Bengals turned his second turnover into a touchdown and a short-lived 20-17 lead. The Broncos responded with an 80-yard touchdown drive on five plays, the big ones a 30-yard completion to Decker, most of it after the catch, and a 29-yard pass interference penalty on Adam “Pacman” Jones on a pass in the end zone intended for Thomas.

The Broncos had the lead back, 24-20, and when Bailey came up with his first interception of the year on Cincinnati’s next possession — a pass to A.J. Green underthrown by Andy Dalton because of pressure from the Broncos’ pass rush, which had five sacks — Manning had a short field and turned it into another touchdown to make it 31-20.

“It’s hard to be at 100 percent every week, and so the good news is we’ve strung three wins together, and for us to continue that takes a lot of mental toughness, especially in the preparation to go on the road,” coach John Fox said.

NFL players and coaches know that plaudits from those of us in the cheap seats are less annoying than our second-guessing when they lose, but possibly more harmful. After consecutive wins over San Diego and New Orleans, everyone was already telling the Broncos how great they were. Exuberant internet columns predict they won’t lose again this season.

One of the encouraging things about these Broncos is they very firmly don’t want to hear it. This starts with Manning, who doesn’t even want to hear that he’s all the way back from last year’s injury.

“We feel good about where we are, but if we want to be a really good offense we’ve got to continue to improve,” said veteran receiver and Manning pal Brandon Stokley. “There’s things to clean up. We had a few too many drops today and we’ve got to put some more points on the board in the first half. So it’s still a work in progress.”

For the same reason, it’s probably better for the Broncos that Manning had those interceptions and the Broncos did not enjoy a second straight easy victory. No matter how much the veterans preach, complacency is a natural reaction to a series of lopsided wins. Instead, as Manning suggested, navigating some stormy seas may serve the team better in the long run.

“I think the more scenarios this team can get into, fourth quarter being down, two-minute drill to win it, whatever it is, this team needs to form its identity going through those type of situations, playing on the road in a hostile environment,” Manning said. “So any time you can persevere when you’re kind of doing it for the first time as a unit, to me that’s a real positive. So to get the win today was really key.”

It’s not often you can throw two interceptions and still finish with a passer rating over 100, but Manning finished at 105.8 by hitting 27 of 35 attempts (despite several drops) and throwing three touchdown passes, leaving him with a still-sensational ratio of 20 touchdowns and six picks on the season. He is leading his new offense, in his first year, by demonstrating personal accountability and demanding that teammates focus on the little things as much as he does.

And also playing really well, even if he does turn out to be human.

Leave a comment | tags: Peyton Manning, Von Miller | posted in Broncos/NFL

October 29, 2012

Throw in a little defense and the Broncos look scary good

By Dave Krieger

Sitting in the shadow of the media scrum around Wesley Woodyard, the linebacker who gave the Broncos’ resurgent defense a face Sunday night, veteran Keith Brooking considered the question briefly, then bent over deliberately to tie his street shoes.

The question, of course, was how a defense that had looked so ordinary through the first six games — tied for 17th in points allowed, 24th in red zone touchdown percentage, 29th in third-down percentage — could suddenly dominate one of the NFL’s best offenses, as it did Sunday night against the Saints, powering a surprisingly easy 34-14 victory that left the Broncos alone in first place in the AFC West.

“It’s a new system,” Brooking explained. “We knew it was going to be a progression to get acclimated to Jack’s system and what he wants. We were going to get better week in and week out if we just believed in the system and what the coaches were telling us to do.”

The Broncos are familiar with this process of acclimation. Jack Del Rio is their seventh defensive coordinator in seven years.

“We obviously have the talent and the ability to play dominating defense,” Brooking said. “When you’re shown the film, you see the way we play. We play with great intensity, with great energy, with great effort. When you add that to talent and a great scheme and really good coaches that put you in position to make plays, I feel really good about where we’re at and, most importantly, where we’re going.”

Talk to enough veterans who have played this game at the highest level and you finally accept that the difference between good and bad is an episode or two of brain lock in a three-hour contest, the sort of thing that happens to many of us routinely in considerably less stressful circumstances. The newer and more complicated the scheme, the more of those there are likely to be.

“It does take a while,” said veteran cornerback Champ Bailey, finally part of a Denver defense that doesn’t require him to be the only playmaker. “It’s really getting a feel for everybody around you — the people you’re playing with, the coaches. It’s a big team thing. Once you get comfortable with your team and your teammates, I mean, the sky’s the limit.

“I’ve said for a long time how important practice is, but it’s getting the younger guys to understand the importance of it. And they bought in and they continue to buy in and everybody’s getting better, which makes our team better.”

In particular, young cornerbacks Chris Harris and Tony Carter have made an impression of late with starter Tracy Porter on the shelf, which should make for an interesting coaching decision when Porter is fully recovered from seizure-related symptoms.

Before you start checking into Super Bowl reservations, keep in mind that despite their gaudy offensive statistics, the Saints are a battered football team. Two of their players — defensive end Will Smith and linebacker Jonathan Vilma — remain tied up in a contentious dispute with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell over suspensions arising out of the team’s so-called bounty scandal. More important, the scandal cost the team its head coach, Sean Payton, for the entire season.

Sunday was the first game back for his replacement, interim coach Joe Vitt, who was suspended over the same scandal for the first six games. It’s all added up to a 2-5 start for a team that went 13-3 last season.

“I just met with our football team and I certainly share in their disappointment,” Vitt said afterward. “I told them quite frankly there was probably too much hype and not enough substance about me coming back last week. I’ve got to do a better job . . . .”

Vitt admitted a more sure-footed head coach might not have had to call timeout before going for it on fourth-and-two at the Broncos’ 47-yard line with the game tied at 7 midway through the second quarter. Woodyard, the defensive star of the game, leaped and intercepted a Drew Brees pass intended for tight end Jimmy Graham. Woodyard became the first Broncos linebacker with more than one interception in a season since Al Wilson in 2004.

“They ran that play earlier in that drive and I wasn’t there to make that play, so I knew I had to come back and make something happen,” the fifth-year linebacker from the University of Kentucky explained. Woodyard, who went undrafted in 2008, also had the Broncos’ only quarterback sack of the game.

But that wasn’t the last of the Saints’ coaching issues. Vitt also acknowledged he should have gone for it on fourth-and-six at midfield in the third quarter trailing 24-7, while his team still had a chance to climb back into the game. It’s rare that an NFL team is breaking in a new head coach at this stage of the season, but that’s part of the bounty scandal’s legacy for the Saints.

The Broncos, on the other hand, are coming together just as their schedule softens up a bit. They didn’t believe they were as bad defensively as they had looked, particularly against the Falcons, Texans and Patriots, but their inability to get off the field on third down overshadowed anything good they did on earlier downs.

Coming back from their bye week fresh and rejuvenated, their mission was to shut down New Orleans on third down. Mission accomplished. The Saints converted one of 12, or eight percent, a far cry from the 46 percent conversion rate the Broncos gave up through their first six games.

“I felt like you have to give their defense credit — they played well and made some plays — but overall I believe there were things that we did to ourselves in a lot of cases that prevented us from converting those,” Brees said.

“We’ve been preparing for third downs,” said Broncos linebacker Von Miller, who chased down Darren Sproles from behind for his 14th tackle of the season behind the line of scrimmage, putting him just one back of Houston’s J.J. Watt for the league lead.

“We were ranked 29th in the league on third downs and there’s no way we should have been ranked there,” Miller said. “We’ve got all the personnel on this team. We’ve got Champ and Elvis (Dumervil) and all these guys. We just haven’t had too much success on third downs. That was our mindset coming in this week, was to get off the field on third downs, and I think that was the key to the game today.”

If you expected a shootout between two of the best quarterbacks in the game, you weren’t alone. I spent much of last week telling anyone who would listen to bet the over on an over/under of 55 1/2 total points in the game. After all, these were two of the NFL’s most prolific offenses, and two of its more pedestrian defenses.

So the performance of the Broncos’ defense — or, conversely, of the Saints’ offense — was the surprise. Averaging 29 points a game coming in, New Orleans managed only seven while the outcome was in doubt.

Denver’s offense, averaging 28, scored six more, perhaps predictably given that the Saints ranked last in defense by a number of metrics. In fact, they became the first team in NFL history to give up 400 yards or more to each of their first seven opponents. The Broncos piled up 530.

Slightly more than half of them came from the arm of Peyton Manning, who had another nearly flawless outing, completing 22 of 30 passes for 305 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 138.9. In the process, he passed Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers to become the top-rated passer in the league at 109.0 for the season.

“I’m a different player coming off the injury, I’m on a different team, and so I’m just working on kind of finding my way, and our team is finding our way,” Manning said modestly, referring to the four neck surgeries that forced him to miss all of last season.

“I keep mentioning finding our identity, and we’re starting to form it,” he said. “I still think there are some things we need to improve on, and we’re going to build off this win — build some consistency as an offense and hopefully I can just continue to make strides and be on the same page as the receivers.”

“You could just see his comfort level rising,” Bailey said of Manning. “I don’t know if he could be any better than he was, but after you see how he’s progressing and getting more comfortable with the guys around him, I don’t know how far he could go.”

Although his fondness for old friends and teammates Brandon Stokley and Jacob Tamme is undiminished, Manning’s top targets are emerging as the Broncos’ talented young duo of Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker.

Decker had two touchdowns Sunday. Thomas had seven catches for 137 yards and a touchdown, including a 41-yard catch in the first quarter that served as the centerpiece of a 98-yard touchdown drive after a New Orleans punt had backed the Broncos up on their own 2-yard line.

“I feel like stuff can always get better, but I feel like I know what he wants and he feels like he knows what I can do and knows where I’m going to be, that I’m going to be in the right spot,” Thomas said. “So I think it’s good and can only get better.”

For the rest of the NFL, that now qualifies as a scary thought. The Broncos moved up to fourth in the league in scoring at 29.1 points per game. Manning now has 17 touchdowns and four interceptions on the season. People who doubted his arm strength are stubbornly sticking to their story, but he is making all the throws and, as usual, all the right reads. He bloodied his thumb on a defensive lineman’s helmet Sunday and played through it. After missing an entire season, toughness may be Manning’s most underrated quality.

Granted, the Saints are lousy defensively and the Broncos were coming off their bye week, fresher and friskier than usual. Nevertheless, seven games into the Manning era, they look like a team with a relentless offense and an improving defense.

The version in which they play five defensive backs, a previous weakness, became a strength Sunday by doubling down on speed. Woodyard and rookie Danny Trevathan, another University of Kentucky product, manned the linebacker spots while Miller put his hand on the ground and became a defensive end. Teams usually run against the Broncos’ nickel, but that didn’t work Sunday. New Orleans gained only 51 yards rushing compared to the Broncos’ 225.

“I tell my DBs all the time, ‘If you want to play, we’ve got to stop the run in nickel. We’ve got to make sure we don’t give up big plays,'” Bailey said. “It’s those little things that cause coaches to want to put the big guys out there. We (defensive backs) feel like we’ve got the best room on the team, so we’ve got to keep proving it every week.”

The biggest threat to the Broncos now might be feeling too good about their situation. Although they are on the road the next two weeks, their opponents get markedly less challenging than the first six weeks. The Ravens are the only team remaining on the schedule with a winning record.

Not only that, but San Diego’s unsightly 7-6 loss to Cleveland on Sunday left every team in the AFC West other than the Broncos below .500. At this rate, they might be able to sleepwalk to the division crown, but if they hope to be a threat in the postseason, that’s not how they want to do it.

“That’s about as complete as we’ve looked all year,” Bailey said. “One thing we can’t do is become complacent. That can happen after big wins. We’ve had two in a row and we just got to keep it rolling.”

Leave a comment | tags: Champ Bailey, Drew Brees, Jack Del Rio, Keith Brooking, Peyton Manning, Von Miller | posted in Broncos/NFL

October 16, 2012

The turning point of a game, and maybe a season

By Dave Krieger

If the Broncos make the playoffs this year — and given the competition in their division, that’s probably the way to bet — they may well look back at halftime in San Diego as the turning point of their season.

Trailing 24-0, they were looking at a record of 2-4 and a two-game deficit to the Chargers. More important, they were looking thoroughly unable to get out of their own way. They couldn’t field a punt or a kickoff. They couldn’t get their passer and pass receivers on the same page. They couldn’t even run unmolested to the end zone without falling to the ground for no apparent reason.

“We had the big play to (Eric) Decker and that guy made a great tackle,” Peyton Manning deadpanned afterward. “I mean, the piece of grass made the tackle, excuse me. So when those things happen, you kind of wonder, hey, golly, is it meant to be? That’s the play we have to have in order to help this comeback.

“We put that play in and thought we could get that exact result, thinking more the touchdown though, not the 50-yard completion and fall down. That was frustrating, obviously, a potential 14-point swing. We’ve got a chance to get a touchdown and then (Quentin) Jammer makes a play and they go up 17. ”

This is what makes sports more intriguing than scripted entertainment, because it is so often utterly inexplicable. The Broncos were as bad as they could be in the first half, then about as good as they could be in the second. The Chargers were the opposite. By the end, it was the biggest comeback in the history of Monday Night Football.

So, naturally, everybody wanted to know what was said in the locker room at intermission. Some sort of Knute Rockne thing?

“There’s no magical words of wisdom, that’s for sure,” coach John Fox told KOA afterward. “I think as I looked in their eyes, and I told them this, I could see they thought they could come back and win the game. The whole thing is believing. They did, and we were fortunate after digging ourselves such a big hole to be able to come back.”

They did have one thing going for them — plenty of experience fighting back from large deficits.

“There’s no speech that causes that turnaround,” Manning said. “It’s simply a matter of will. I do think offensively the fact that we had been there before, we have shown the ability to score quickly. It was nice to finally get a lead there in the fourth quarter and give our defense a chance to play with the lead and they could really peel their ears back and rush the passer.”

The litany of mistakes in the first half made the Broncos look as incompetent as they had looked since Manning’s arrival:

— In his first attempt to field a punt for the Broncos — a fair catch, no less — Trindon Holliday, signed just last week after being released by Houston, dropped the ball. The Chargers recovered and kicked a field goal three plays later.

— Rookie Omar Bolden fumbled the ensuing kickoff. The Chargers kept trying to give the Broncos the ball and the Broncos kept giving it back. The Chargers required only two plays to score a touchdown, making it 10-0.

— Following a Jim Leonhard interception, the Broncos were driving when Manning and Matt Willis miscommunicated on a sight adjustment. Instead of completing a long drive with a score and pulling themselves back into the game, the Broncos watched Jammer, the Chargers cornerback, pick off Manning’s pass and run it 80 yards the other way for a 17-0 lead.

— As if to rub it in, Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers drove the ball down the Broncos’ throats in the final four minutes of the half, capping the drive with a touchdown pass to tight end Antonio Gates.

“We were really down,” said veteran receiver Brandon Stokley. “Anytime you’re down 24-0 in the first half and played like we played, we were disappointed. But we’ve got a lot of professionals in this room, a lot of guys with heart and character, and I knew we were going to come out in the second half and give everything we had, and that’s what we did.”

The Broncos emerged from the visitors’ locker room and drove the length of the field to their first touchdown, a 29-yard strike from Manning to Demaryius Thomas.

Just like that, everything changed. Now it was the Chargers making critical mistakes. When Broncos defensive end Elvis Dumervil got the first of his two quarterback sacks on San Diego’s first possession of the third quarter, Rivers fumbled the ball. Cornerback Tony Carter picked it up on the run and raced 65 yards for a touchdown. With 4:41 still to play in the third, the Broncos had pulled to within 24-14 and made it into a game again.

“DBs are taught to scoop all balls, whether it’s a fumble or not, so we were just doing something carrying from the practice field to the game field,” Carter said.

“We’ve been working on that since OTAs,” Dumervil said. “It was like a domino effect. We finally got one and they just started coming in bunches. That’s just the way it works with turnovers, man, and sacks and interceptions. They come in bunches and at this point now we’ve got to stay consistent with it.”

“We kind of unraveled after that,” Rivers said. “They scored and made it 24-7 and we were driving, just kind of moving right along down the field and they got us in a third down and they brought an all-out blitz. I was trying to just lose a little ground and lay it to Malcolm (Floyd). I was throwing it really to be incomplete or maybe get interference or anything. Malcolm’s one-on-one. We either punt or try a long field goal there. And then obviously that play happens and then we go three and out and then they score again and then we throw an interception and they score again. It kind of unraveled after that play.”

Decker, who had fallen down with nothing but green grass between him and the end zone in the first half, carried three San Diego defenders with him across the goal line early in the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to three.

On the Chargers’ next possession, the Broncos produced yet another turnover, this one an interception by Carter. Four plays later, Manning approached the line of scrimmage and spied single coverage on Stokley, his old friend, and checked off at the line of scrimmage.

Manning was so busy changing the call he almost ran out of time. Center Dan Koppen had to motion to him to get back into the shotgun to take the snap before the play clock ran out. Manning turned to his right and launched a perfect fade into the end zone. The 36-year-old Stokley went up and took the ball from cornerback Marcus Gilchrist to give the Broncos their first lead at 28-24.

“I’ve thrown that route to Stokley quite a few times,” said Manning, who played four seasons with Stokley in Indianapolis. “That’s one of those that all the years and all the practice repetitions, it sure does pay off.

“We got man-to-man coverage, got him in press coverage, and I’ll take Stokley in the slot over anybody. I love Wes Welker and some of the all-time slot greats, but he’s my favorite, he’s the best in my opinion, and he’s really hard to cover there.

“I just gave him a little fade route and the guy really had pretty good coverage. It was kind of an in-between decision whether to throw the fade or to throw that back shoulder, and I decided to give him a chance to make a play on the ball. The fact that he caught it and got the feet in bounds, it sure was an awesome play and the team sure needed it at that point in time.”

“Peyton made an audible at the last second and actually made a great throw. I guess the catch was all right,” Stokley said.

“We’ve been talking about starting fast and starting fast and starting fast and we just didn’t start fast. So that was disappointing to come out the gates like we did. But we’ve shown all year we’ve got a lot of heart. That first half was embarrassing, but we fought back.”

Cornerback Chris Harris, elevated to the No. 2 cover position with Tracy Porter home in Denver nursing an illness, ended each of the next two Chargers possessions with interceptions. He returned the second 46 yards for the clinching touchdown.

Rivers finished with a remarkable five second-half turnovers — three interceptions and two fumbles.

“Mostly just poor throws,” Rivers said. “I wasn’t fooled out there once today. The first interception, I didn’t see exactly how it ended, but I know I gave (tight end Antonio) Gates a chance down there and they ended up with it. The other ones were bad throws. There’s really no other reason for them.”

Even after adding three turnovers to their own mounting season total in the first half, the Broncos ended up winning the turnover battle.

“You get what you emphasize,” Fox said. “After that first half, I was like, I’m not sure that really worked. But it’s kind of how you finish and I was proud of the way our guys pulled together as a football team. That’s as good a second half as I’ve ever seen.”

“I think the identity is slowly starting to come,” Decker said. “I think we understand who we are and what our strengths are and what our weaknesses are. I would say offensively, if we don’t hurt ourselves, we’re an explosive team. Defensively, if we can make plays on third downs, we can stop anybody. That’s our mindset. That’s the attitude we have.”

The Broncos still aspire to play well enough early in games not to require all these big comebacks. But as a gut check and a turning point, Monday night in San Diego will do nicely. Maybe it was a halftime speech after all.

“Coach Fox just told us we’d better pick it up,” Decker said. “Otherwise it’s going to be a sad, sad bye week.”

Instead, the Broncos head into the bye week with reason to believe.

Leave a comment | tags: Brandon Stokley, Elvis Dumervil, Eric Decker, John Fox, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Tony Carter | posted in Broncos/NFL

October 15, 2012

Archie Manning: ‘It’s been a big transition for Peyton’

By Dave Krieger

In sports these days, as in pretty much everything else, we are all about immediate gratification, and Archie Manning knows it. He also knows a Broncos record of 2-3 going into tonight’s game at San Diego opens the door for skeptics to suggest his middle son, Peyton, is over the hill at 36.

A former NFL quarterback himself, Archie’s prescription for Broncos followers calls for a quality in short supply among sports fans these days: patience.

“I know it’s been a big transition for Peyton,” the elder Manning said on the Dave Logan Show. (You can listen to the full interview here.)

“And I’m not sure what’s the bigger transition — coming back from four neck surgeries or changing to a new team, new city, new system, new players, that type of thing. You know, (after) 14 years in one place.

“I know a lot of people are disappointed at a 2-3 record, but I’ve said from the get-go when people asked me, I said I think if this group of people can stay healthy, it’ll definitely be a better team in the second half of the season than the first half of the season.

“A lot of times, you say that about a new team or a new coaching staff. And I know the coaching staff was there last year, or some of them were, but I did look at this as kind of a start-over situation. I know the system changed from last year and a lot of the players.

“Somebody asked me (two weeks ago), ‘Is Peyton excited about going to New England and playing the Patriots?’ I said, ‘I think he could think of four or five other teams he’d rather be playing.’ The schedule is brutal, guys. I mean, it’s really tough. But it’s the NFL and I think it’s a matter right now of kind of hanging in, getting better, keep coming together as a team, offense and defense.

“But back to Peyton, I think Peyton’s happy. He’s not happy with losing three games, but I think he’s happy with the guys he’s playing with and everybody working to try to make progress.”

Archie Manning is one of the few people who can relate directly to what Peyton Manning is going through. Like his son, the elder Manning missed an entire season in the midst of his NFL career, sitting out the 1976 campaign with a shoulder injury. I asked him what he found to be the biggest challenge coming back after a year off.

“I think just kind of getting the rust off,” he said. “Probably somewhat similar to Peyton in that mine was, I had biceps tendinitis and had two operations on my throwing arm. His surgery wasn’t on his throwing arm, but still the neck surgeries did affect his throwing to the point where he basically just started all over again with his rehab. He went to Duke and teamed up with his old college coach and just started from scratch.”

Duke coach David Cutcliffe was Manning’s quarterback coach and offensive coordinator at the University of Tennessee from 1994-97.

“It’s a rust situation,” Archie Manning said. “I don’t care how much you’ve played before, when you miss a whole year and you’re dealing with your arm, which is the reason you’re there as a quarterback, you’ve got to kind of prove to yourself that you can do this, you can make this throw, make that throw. So it’s been a process. He’s my son, but I’m really proud of Peyton, the way he’s dealt with everything.”

I asked if he was surprised that after an abortive free agent tour, Peyton ended up in Denver.

“I can’t say it surprised me,” he said. “That was the first visit. What was so tough for Peyton, the Indianapolis thing was hard. I think he’s a pretty loyal person and he felt like he needed to be loyal to Indianapolis, and he was going to stay. Well, it didn’t work out that way. So when he finally came to the realization he was going to be gone, it was kind of tough. There were a lot of ties there, 14 years.

“So he does that breakup one day and has got to start this tour the next day. I thought that was really hard on him. So I think the place that he made his first visit was where he knew he’d be comfortable for a visit, and that was with John Fox and John Elway and the Broncos. And then he did the rest of it.

“Now, he didn’t go on all the trips. He called and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ He’d been to Arizona, he’d been (to Denver), and he said, ‘They’re going to have to come to me. I just can’t make this tour.’

“And I said, ‘Well, where are you going?’

“He said, ‘I’m going home.’

“And I said, ‘Well, where’s home?’

“And he said, ‘Duke. Duke is now home.’ So that’s where he was comfortable, with his old coach and some support there.

“He was 36 years old. I did not stick my nose in it. Sure, we talked some, but the only thing I told him, and I think that’s what you tell a (son), kind of like back during recruiting: ‘Go with your heart. Go with your heart.’ And I think that’s what he did.

“And never look back. And I don’t think he ever will. I know it’s not what everybody wanted, but still there’s been some progress made here for everybody, and if everybody can stay healthy, it’s going to get better.”

Leave a comment | tags: Archie Manning, Peyton Manning | posted in Broncos/NFL

October 7, 2012

Broncos remain a work in progress

By Dave Krieger

The local pro football club entered Week 5 ranked ninth in the NFL in rushing defense, surrendering an average of 87.5 yards a game on the ground. Needless to say, that ranking will tumble after the Patriots steamrolled them for 251 rushing yards Sunday on their way to a 31-21 victory.

In fact, Denver’s defense as a whole looked Charmin soft most of the afternoon, especially on third down, when the Patriots made an interminable series of big plays. New England’s three longest gainers came on third down, as did the ultimate humiliation of Denver’s defense — a third-quarter running play on third-and-17 that gained 19.

Whatever the Broncos are doing defensively on third down, they need to re-examine it. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to do a top-to-bottom review of a defense that gave up 444 yards to the Patriots.

“You’ve got to translate things from the meeting room and practice field to the game,” cornerback Champ Bailey told KOA afterward. “Coaches can’t go out there and play for us. We’ve got to make sure we put ourselves in the position to make plays and get off the field on third downs or whatever it may be. We worked on everything they did to us. It wasn’t no surprises. They just hit us in the mouth and we didn’t hit back hard enough.”

On the bright side, if it weren’t for three killer turnovers, the offense might have kept pace with the Patriot juggernaut. When he could get on the field, Peyton Manning was excellent, completing 31 of 44 passes for 345 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. His passer rating on the day (116.2) was slightly better than Tom Brady’s (104.6).

Down 31-14 early in the fourth quarter, the Broncos were driving when running back Willis McGahee dropped an easy swing pass on fourth-and-one to end the possession. Still, after the Patriots turned the ball over on downs on their ensuing series, Manning drove the Broncos offense 43 yards in six plays and hit Brandon Stokley with a short touchdown pass to make it 31-21 with more than six minutes remaining.

Three plays later, Von Miller, who was the Broncos’ only defensive playmaker in Foxborough, stripped the ball from Patriots running back Stevan Ridley for Denver’s only takeaway of the afternoon. Manning drove the offense another 54 yards in less than two minutes to the New England 14. With 3:48 to play, the Broncos had a chance to get within one score and set up a potentially memorable comeback.

Instead, Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich stripped the ball from McGahee at the New England 11 for the Broncos’ third giveaway and that was that.

“Man enough to admit I messed the game up,” McGahee posted on Twitter soon after it was over. “Put it on my shoulders. I can handle it.”

Between the defensive softness and the offensive turnovers, the Broncos demonstrated that they are still a work in progress and not quite ready for prime time (although they’ll have a chance to dispute that assessment in prime time next Monday night, when they face off against the Chargers in San Diego).

The continuing deficits in the turnover battle are a growing concern. New England entered the game first in the AFC in turnover margin at plus 8 and improved to plus 10. The Broncos were tied for 12th at minus 4 and are now minus 6.

Wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, in particular, needs a crash course in ball security. If anyone doubted Thomas’ vast potential as a playmaker, those doubts should have been erased by his nine catches for 188 yards, including a couple of sensational grabs where he looked like a man among boys. But after fumbling a ball last week while switching it from one hand to the other to short-circuit an apparent touchdown, he prevented the Broncos from getting off to a quick start Sunday by fumbling at the New England 10 on Denver’s first possession of the game.

There’s no telling how that might have changed the complexion of the game. As it was, the Patriots scored first and ultimately built a seemingly prohibitive 31-7 lead.

The Broncos’ second giveaway was a Manning fumble when Ninkovich beat right tackle Orlando Franklin on a pass rush and came up behind Manning to slap the ball out of his hand. The third was McGahee’s fatal fumble with 3:48 to play.

“They are a good team, and when you play a good team at their place, you don’t have to play perfect football, but you have to eliminate mistakes and be sound and can’t have self-inflicted wounds,” Manning said. “We had a couple of those today which kept us from having a chance to get back in the game. It’s tough when you do that against a good opponent.”

If the turnovers were maddening, the defense was mostly frustrating. The Patriots converted 11 of 17 third downs (65 percent) and the Broncos couldn’t get them off the field for long stretches of the afternoon.

New England had the ball for 35 minutes and 49 seconds of the available hour, the Broncos for the remaining 24:11. When you have two of the best quarterbacks of all time facing off, you’d like to give them roughly equal time to do their stuff. The Broncos were unable to manage that.

The Patriots’ three longest plays of the game came on third down:

— On third-and-14 from the New England 11-yard line in the second quarter, Brady’s short pass to Danny Woodhead went for 25 yards with safety Mike Adams and linebacker Joe Mays finally making the tackle.

— On third-and-12 from the New England 18 to start the fourth quarter, wide receiver Deion Branch beat cornerback Tracy Porter up the middle for another 25.

— On third-and-one from the New England 45 late in the second quarter, Brandon Bolden rumbled 24 yards to the Denver 31.

But the third down conversion everyone will remember was the third-and-17 from the New England 43 midway through the third quarter. The score was still 17-7 at that point and the Broncos had an opportunity to get the ball back with plenty of time to make up the deficit.

The Patriots seemed to concede the change of possession by calling a running play. Woodhead, their 5-foot-8-inch bowling ball, rambled around left end for 19 yards and a first down. Eleven plays later, the Patriots scored on a quarterback sneak to make it 24-7.

“They’re a good offense,” said Miller, who had two of the Broncos’ four quarterback sacks in addition to their only forced fumble. “We knew that coming into the game. We prepared for the type of offense that we knew they were going to run. I felt like we were very prepared coming into this game. We just didn’t execute. Another week we didn’t execute and we put ourselves in situations that we can’t get out of.”

Some of this is to be expected. The Broncos have a new defensive coordinator again — Jack Del Rio is their seventh in seven years — so his schemes may take some getting used to. Still, it seems clear that Del Rio and head coach John Fox, a former defensive coordinator himself, need to sit down together in a video room early this week and figure out what’s going wrong with their third-down defense.

For some time, the Broncos have had a dilemma on third down. Last year, when they went to their nickel defense in passing situations, the fifth defensive back took the place of middle linebacker Joe Mays, who plays the run a lot better than he plays the pass.

Opponents reacted by running the ball against the Broncos’ nickel, often with great success. So this year the club has experimented with keeping Mays on the field in the nickel. Opponents have responded by targeting him in the passing game.

Sunday, it didn’t seem to matter who the Broncos had on the field. The Patriots ran it down their throats at will. But the tendency to give up big plays on third down is not one that can continue if the Broncos hope to climb into contention.

Fox and Del Rio need to diagnose what went wrong and be willing to make whatever changes to their schemes or personnel that diagnosis demands. Surrendering 251 yards on the ground is an embarrassment, or should be.

“It’s a disappointing loss,” Manning said. “We’re 2-3 and we’ve got a pivotal division game (coming up). I just made a little talk to the team. We have to learn from this. It hurts. It just rips your guts out to lose a game against an AFC opponent, but we have to learn from it, have to find a way to get better from it. I think we’ll see some things on the film that were good, some guys made some big plays at some pivotal times. We just need to have more consistency throughout the 60-minute game.”

There’s a tendency to overreact to whatever has happened most recently in the NFL, but it’s worth remembering that it’s still early. A win in San Diego next week would keep the Broncos in touch with the division leaders while they wait for their schedule to lighten up, which it does on the back end.

It’s also worth remembering that the three teams they’ve lost to — Houston, Atlanta and New England — are three of the best in the league. Such losses early in the season, while you’re getting acclimated to a new quarterback and defensive coordinator, are not particularly surprising. Lots of experts figured if the Broncos could make it through a difficult first half schedule at 4-4, they’d be in good position to make some noise in the second half of the season.

But if they want to be ready to make a move following their bye week, they need to address their defensive issues now, while there’s still time.

Leave a comment | tags: Champ Bailey, Demaryius Thomas, Peyton Manning, Von Miller, Willis McGahee | posted in Broncos/NFL

September 30, 2012

This is how good the Broncos can be

By Dave Krieger

If you’ve listened to various Broncos coaches perform the required post-mortems after being sliced and diced by Peyton Manning over the years, the words coming from Raiders coach Dennis Allen on Sunday should sound familiar.

“They out-coached us, they outplayed us, they beat us in every phase of the game,” he said after the Broncos routed the Raiders 37-6.

“The time of possession is killing us. We’ve got to be able to get off the field on third down defensively so we don’t play so many plays.”

The Broncos had the ball for 37 minutes, 25 seconds of the available 60, the Raiders for the other 22:35. You may recall the Broncos winning the coin toss in Indianapolis under former coach Josh McDaniels and deferring, giving the ball to Manning to open the game. Allen did the same thing Sunday, with the same result. Manning took the ball on the opening possession and marched it down the field to give the Broncos a lead they would never relinquish.

One of the unwritten rules in the NFL is you’re not allowed to make excuses, so one very relevant fact got almost no attention after Manning’s best game yet as a Bronco — the Raiders’ secondary was in tatters. Oakland was without both of its starting cornerbacks and Manning exploited this weakness at will.

When I mentioned to Allen that it’s hard to play Manning without either of your starting corners, the former Broncos defensive coordinator said what he was required to say.

“Well, it’s hard to play against Peyton Manning no matter what. He’s a good quarterback. He’s a Hall of Fame quarterback and there’s a reason why he’s a Hall of Fame quarterback. But we’ve got the guys that we have and that’s who we’ve got to go out and play with. And we’ve got to play at an NFL level. So we’re not going to use injuries as a crutch. That’s all of us.”

The Raiders signed a pair of 30-year-old free agent cornerbacks during the offseason. Ron Bartell lasted one game, breaking his left shoulder blade in the Raiders’ opener against the Chargers. Shawntae Spencer lasted twice as long, sustaining a foot injury in Week 2.

So the Raiders rolled into Denver with backup Pat Lee at one corner and safety Michael Huff at the other. Manning feasted, completing 30 of 38 passes to eight different receivers for 338 yards, three touchdowns and a passer rating of 130.

“They’re still professionals out there and they’re still NFL players,” said veteran Broncos receiver Brandon Stokley. “You have to go in with the same mindset every game. I think we did that this week. We knew if we went out there and executed, there’d be some plays to be made. And that’s what we were able to do.”

Behind Manning, the Broncos converted 10 of 16 third downs, a remarkable 63 percent. Behind Carson Palmer, the Raiders converted one of 12, or 8 percent.

For a while, it looked as if the Broncos wouldn’t take full advantage. Demaryius Thomas was on his way to the end zone early in the second quarter when he fumbled the ball trying to shift it from his right hand to his left.

On their next possession, the Broncos had a fourth-and-one at the Oakland 36-yard line. Head coach John Fox had at least three choices: Let Manning go for the first down, as he had, successfully, on a fourth-and-one in the first quarter; let kicker Matt Prater try a 53-yard field goal, well within his range, especially at altitude; or fake the field goal and let Prater try to get the first down.

Inexplicably, Fox chose the latter, which produced a bizarre spectacle of the place-kicker rolling to his left and lofting a pass apparently intended for offensive guard Zane Beadles.

“I’m not sure it will go down with Montana-Rice or any of those great passing combinations,” Fox said. “We probably won’t see that one again for a while.”

Following the coach to the podium, Manning deadpanned: “Well, Fox took my line . . . I just kind of told them to maybe give Manning-to-Stokley a chance, maybe before Prater-to-Beadles. It’s one of the all-time great combinations, right? Kelly-Reed, Montana-Rice, Prater-Beadles, you know.”

It was easy to laugh because the Broncos erased any regrets in a fabulous third quarter. For the first time this season, offense, defense and special teams all reached the top of their game at the same time.

Having deferred to the second half, the Raiders got the ball to open the third quarter. The Denver defense forced a three-and-out, the big play a tackle by nickel back Chris Harris of Raiders receiver Denarius Moore one yard short of the first down. Manning and the offense responded with a nine-play, 79-yard touchdown drive capped by Manning’s 17-yard scoring strike to Eric Decker.

The Broncos kicked off and the defense forced another three-and-out. Champ Bailey put Oakland in a hole right away by tackling fullback Marcel Reece four yards behind the line of scrimmage on first down.

When Shane Lechler tried to punt the ball back to the Broncos, special teams ace David Bruton got his hand on it. Because the ball traveled two yards beyond the line of scrimmage, it didn’t count as a block, but no matter — the Broncos got the ball at the Oakland 18 and four plays later had another touchdown.

“They know what I did,” Bruton said. “They know what it is. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

In fact, Bruton wasn’t going for the block until the Raiders invited him in.

“I wasn’t even supposed to rush on that punt,” he said. “I was supposed to just pin the wing inside. He gave me a soft shoulder and I just ended up reaching over his shoulder and got my hand on the ball.”

I asked Bruton to describe the feeling when he felt his hand meet the ball. “Can’t nobody block me, that’s the feeling,” he said with a broad smile.

“And they can’t!” said safety Rahim Moore, eavesdropping from the next locker.

A third consecutive three-and-out for Oakland followed. This time linebackers Von Miller and Wesley Woodyard did the honors, stuffing Raiders running back Darren McFadden two yards behind the line of scrimmage on a third-and-two.

As night follows day, it produced yet another Broncos touchdown, this one taking only five plays to cover 63 yards. That made it 31-6.

In less than 12 minutes of game action, the Broncos had turned a nail-biter into a blowout. That’s why coaches talk so much about the three phases of the game working together. When they do, your players start to feel like a bunch of supermen.

But just as some fans overreacted negatively to the Broncos losing back-to-back games to Atlanta and Houston (which are now a combined 8-0), some are liable to overreact positively to the rout of the Raiders. Next up, the Broncos travel to New England to take on the Patriots, who put 52 points on Buffalo this week. The last time the Broncos played in New England . . . well . . . you probably remember.

“I think the key that I’ve said all along is just trying to keep making progress somehow,” Manning said. “That doesn’t always show on the scoreboard. You’d like to win every game as you’re feeling your way and learning about your team and learning about yourself a little bit. So there’s still a lot of that going on, for me out there as the quarterback and for our team, sort of figuring things out. But I think today we learned some things. We still have some things to improve on, but anytime you can be working on things and get a win at the same time, that sure is nice.”

“He’s getting more comfortable,” Fox said of Manning. “Let’s not forget he didn’t play all last season. This is a new team, a new coaching staff, a new city, a new field, a new everything for him. The type of guy he is, he’s just going to get better and better. He’s a championship guy and he’s going to get used to his teammates, our players. He just was better at it today than earlier.”

As Manning adjusts to Denver, Denver adjusts to Manning. Running the offense almost exclusively out of the no-huddle Sunday, several times Manning had to shush the excitable Orange Sunday crowd so his teammates could hear him calling signals at the line of scrimmage. This produced a novel instruction from the video screens, which often exhort crowds to make noise. “Quiet,” the boards instructed.

There will be more ups and downs, of course. It’s the NFL. But this was more than the Broncos’ most lopsided win over the Raiders in 50 years, more than putting a stop to four years of struggling at home against their longtime rivals from Oakland, more than a good start to the competition within the AFC West.

This was a template for how good this Broncos team can be. Everything came together, including a little bit of luck in the form of the Raiders’ banged up secondary. The question now is how often they can live up to it.

Leave a comment | tags: Brandon Stokley, David Bruton, Dennis Allen, John Fox, Matt Prater, Peyton Manning, Zane Beadles | posted in Broncos/NFL

September 18, 2012

What, you thought the Broncos would go undefeated?

By Dave Krieger

In his bewilderment during last night’s first quarter, Peyton Manning looked as if he’d just stepped out of a retrofitted DeLorean and was trying to figure out what year it was.

Clearly, it wasn’t the next year after he played last, as it had always been before. That would have been 2011.

Just as clearly, the people around him were not the same as those he played with last. That team is gone.

The NFL’s Rip Van Winkle awoke to find himself in entirely new circumstances. And while he was gone, it was evident his opponents had been studying up. By the time he figured out he had morphed from the tricker to the trickee, he had thrown three interceptions in a first quarter for the first time in his career.

“We were able to disguise our coverages very well,” Atlanta coach Mike Smith said after the Falcons’ 27-21 victory dropped the Broncos to 1-1. “That’s something we said all week we’d have to do. You can’t give the quarterback a pre-snap read, and we were able to do that early in the ballgame. He made some throws we were able to convert, and make plays on the ball.”

When Manning last played, disguising coverages mostly meant showing blitz when you didn’t plan to blitz or the opposite, showing vanilla and then bringing the house. What Falcons defensive coordinator Mike Nolan did was more sophisticated. He disguised not merely the defensive play call but the defensive scheme as well.

Former quarterback and ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer called it a “walk-around, amoeba defense” that produced “a lot of brain clutter.” There was no base defense in position before most of those first-quarter snaps, just a bunch of guys wandering around.

“William Moore lines up as the (middle) linebacker, drops as the hole safety,” Dilfer said, referring to the Falcons’ strong safety, who made the first of the three interceptions. “Peyton Manning thinks he has a defined look at the snap; the look changes post-snap, (he) makes a big mistake.

“I think what you saw was Mike Nolan win the chess match and his players execute a scheme beautifully designed for Peyton Manning. They gave him these pre-snap looks, where Peyton usually wins, and then, as the ball is snapped, that look becomes totally different. Playing the game after the snap is much different from playing it before the snap and this is a guy that hasn’t played football in a year.”

That’s the most important fact to remember. For perhaps the first time since his rookie season in the league, Manning is actually behind the NFL learning curve, trying to catch up after spending a year undergoing multiple neck surgeries and undertaking a grueling rehabilitation process.

Nolan will not be the last defensive coordinator to try to take away his pre-snap advantage. In Week 1, Pittsburgh’s Dick LeBeau limited his disguises to the usual suspects: Where would safety Troy Polamalu be? Nolan’s walk-around scheme meant almost anyone could end up almost anywhere, and they frequently did.

Still, Manning eventually figured it out and brought the Broncos back to the point where a defensive stop with two minutes remaining would have given him and the offense a shot at a come-from-behind win. It didn’t happen, but the fact it was even possible after turning the ball over four times in the first quarter — Manning’s three interceptions and Knowshon Moreno’s fumble, awarded to Atlanta by replacement referees even after Broncos tackle Orlando Franklin emerged from the pile with the ball — showed how competitive the Broncos can be.

“You’ve got to remember, Peyton Manning’s a new quarterback in our system,” Broncos coach John Fox said. “He’s adjusting to teammates, adjusting to the things we’re doing. It’s not going to happen overnight. He’s just going to get better. I think we learned a lot about our football team tonight.”

Much of what they learned was good, actually. The Falcons are an excellent team, a likely contender for the NFC title. Yet even after spotting them four turnovers, the Broncos ended up with more first downs (24-22), more total yards of offense (336-275) and a much better ground game (118 yards to 67).

Beyond the turnovers, Denver’s two most obvious weaknesses were the lack of a pass rush on Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan — he was sacked once — and an inability for the second week in a row to cover an opposing tight end (Tony Gonzalez had seven catches for 70 yards and a touchdown). But even those problems probably could have been overcome without the 4-0 disparity in giveaways.

“Those first three interceptions, he was flat out tricked by the coverage,” Dilfer said of Manning.

“Obviously, I’d like to have all three of them back,” Manning said. “Just three bad decisions. I’m sure when I see the film I’m sure I’ll see somebody open short, underneath, on a check-down. So I’d love to have all three of them back. But I’ll learn from them and I think our team will learn from them and I would hope to be better for it.”

Almost as compelling as the unfamiliar sight of a confused Manning was an excruciating performance by the crew of replacement referees, who were nearly as bad as the Broncos’ offense early on.

Although it’s easy to mock these refs, who were asked to fill in when the NFL locked out its regular game officials, it’s not their fault. These are referees from lower collegiate divisions most of whom would not even be candidates to form a new pool of referees if all the locked-out referees were suddenly fired. Such a pool would consist of Division I college refs, who can currently be found working Division I college games on Saturday afternoons.

Late Monday night, long after the game was over, Steve Young, the retired quarterback and ESPN commentator, offered a devastating but honest appraisal of why the NFL allowed the administration of its game to get as bad as it was at the Georgia Dome:

“I can say this because league officials have gone to sleep, so let me just go right at this. There’s a lot of people in the league that would rather break the (referees’) union. There’s a lot of people who don’t feel like officiating is on-field personnel; they feel like it’s a commodity.

“But more importantly, everything about the NFL now is inelastic for demand. There’s nothing they can do to hurt the demand for the game. So the bottom line is they don’t care. Player safety doesn’t matter in this case. Bring in Division III officials — doesn’t matter. Because in the end you’re still going to watch the game. We’re going to all complain and moan and gripe and say there’s all these problems. All the coaches will say it, the players will say it. Doesn’t matter. So just go ahead, gripe all you want. I’m going to rest. Let them eat cake.”

This is actually something to worry about. If the NFL doesn’t figure out that the integrity of the game requires referees with a clue, the chaos on the field in Atlanta will be replicated on gridirons across the country. In fact, it may get worse. At one point, the Broncos’ head coach found himself on the field trying to break up a scrum that looked about one short fuse from turning into a brawl.

By comparison, Manning’s bad quarter should cause very little concern. In fact, you could argue that by November, he’ll be thanking Nolan for helping bring him up to speed.

The four-time Most Valuable Player has been back for two games after missing a full season — an eternity in sports. He’ll adjust. It’s what he does best.

Leave a comment | tags: John Fox, Mike Nolan, Peyton Manning | posted in Broncos/NFL

September 10, 2012

An auspicious beginning

By Dave Krieger

There’s a scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch and Sundance are auditioning for jobs as stagecoach guards. Percy Garris, played by Strother Martin, asks if Sundance can hit anything with his six shooter.

“Sometimes,” Sundance says. “Can I move?”

“What the hell ya mean, move?” Martin asks.

Standing still, Sundance hits nothing. Martin is about to give up on him when Sundance moves as he might in a gunfight and destroys the target.

“I’m better when I move.” he says.

Which brings us to Peyton Manning and the no-huddle offense. Early in Sunday night’s game, the Broncos ran a traditional offense, huddling up between plays. They did OK, too, earning two first downs before they were forced to punt.

But it was in the no-huddle, the scheme Manning mastered in Indianapolis, that they began gashing Pittsburgh’s able defense in the second quarter. Here’s what Tony Dungy, Manning’s former coach with the Colts, posted on Twitter after the game:

“Once Broncos went to no huddle Peyton Manning led them to 3 TDs and a FG. I am so happy for him. A lot of hard work went into his comeback.”

Manning agreed, at least with the first part.

“I think it made a difference,” he said. “I think it did sort of give our offense a little boost. I can’t speak to (the Steelers), just how they felt about it, whether it fatigued them or not. I don’t know that. But it did give our offense a little boost where we got into a little rhythm.”

For those who doubted whether Manning could resemble his younger self at age 36 after multiple neck surgeries and a full year off, check out these numbers from his first game back:

He completed 19 of 26 passes for 253 yards, two touchdowns and a passer rating of 129.2.

For the sake of comparison, Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger completed 22 of 40 for 245 yards, two touchdowns, a comeback-killing interception and a passer rating of 79.7.

As good as Roethlisberger was, and he was, Manning was equally productive, more efficient and less mistake-prone.

“He’s Peyton,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said.

“He’s a great player,” Broncos coach John Fox said. “A lot’s been made of the injury and those types of things, but we’re just glad he’s on our team.”

The atmosphere at Mile High for Manning’s Broncos debut was like that of a legendary actor opening in a new play on Broadway. The sense of anticipation, that the stadium was the place to be, came with the early-arriving crowd.

The Broncos’ return to orange as their primary uniform color gave it a visual theme. The stadium was a sea of orange. The Steelers travel so well that normally there are significant patches of yellow and black whenever they come to town. Evidently, Broncos season ticket holders were less willing to sell their tickets this time. The yellow towels that flew when the Steelers made big plays were more isolated than usual, threatening to drown in that ocean of orange.

The Broncos reported the fourth-highest attendance in franchise history — 76,823 — with 181 no-shows instead of the usual 3,000 or 4,000. If executive vice president of football operations John Elway has really made the club competitive for the first time since he was executive vice president of throwing the football, well, the Broncos may again be the toughest ticket in town.

“What an awesome atmosphere, playing in prime time and the fans were rocking,” Manning said.

The game had an odd rhythm, chiefly because for a long stretch in the middle, Manning and the offense couldn’t get on the field. In the third quarter, Pittsburgh possessed the ball for 14 minutes and 24 seconds, leaving Manning the other 36 seconds.

Of course, this was in part because Manning and the offense traversed 80 yards in two plays during those 36 seconds, including the night’s signature play, a screen pass that wide receiver Demaryius Thomas turned into a 71-yard touchdown.

For the Steelers, this had to be a nightmarish flashback. The last time they played a game that counted, it was a playoff game at Mile High in which the final scene was Thomas running toward the south end zone with the game-winning touchdown in overtime. This touchdown wasn’t quite as decisive, but their view of Thomas was exactly the same.

When I asked afterward if Manning had checked out of another play and into that one, he declined to answer, so I’m going to take that as a yes. We are only just beginning to learn the Manning Rules — what he’ll discuss and what he won’t — but an audible in the no-huddle is very common. It looked like he got to the line of scrimmage, saw the corner backing off Thomas and took advantage. If that’s true, it’s more evidence that in signing him as a free agent, the Broncos acquired as much a mental weapon as a physical one.

Interestingly, he had no problem explaining the tactical considerations that made the play an option.

“We were running the ball on a similar formation in the first half and they kept blitzing off the back side, so it was kind of a halftime adjustment,” he said.

“We thought we could fake that run to the strong side and throw him a screen, thought we’d have a chance for a big play. We weren’t thinking an 80-yard touchdown, maybe a nine-yard gain was kind of what I was thinking. So it sure was a nice surprise. Some really good blocking on that play. Zane (Beadles) got a good block, (Ryan) Clady. I know Matt Willis came all the way from the back side and got the safety and of course Demaryius did the majority of the work. Really turned it on with great speed. Just a huge play.”

Thomas, by the way, joined Eric Decker and Jacob Tamme as Manning’s leading receivers on the night, each catching five balls. Veteran Brandon Stokley caught two and Willis and Joel Dreessen caught one each.

The big play to Thomas gave the Broncos a 14-13 lead, which lasted 6 minutes and 18 seconds, the length of the Steelers’ subsequent possession. For a moment, the Broncos seemed to have forced the visitors into a three-and-out — a welcome achievement considering Pittsburgh’s previous possession lasted 8 minutes, 55 seconds — but when safety Rahim Moore was called for a personal foul on the Steelers’ failed third-down play, it gave Roethlisberger new life and he took full advantage.

When Big Ben hit wide receiver Mike Wallace with a short slant in the first minute of the fourth quarter, Pittsburgh went ahead 19-14, missing a two-point try that would have made it 21.

Now in a groove, Manning brought the Broncos right back. He hit Tamme, like Stokley a former teammate with the Colts, with his second touchdown pass — a one-yard flip on an unusual Peyton Manning rollout to his left. He hit running back Willis McGahee with another short throw for a two-point conversion that made it 22-19.

Jack Del Rio’s defense finally forced Roethlisberger into a three-and-out and Manning responded with his fourth consecutive scoring drive, not counting a kneel-down to end the first half.

When cornerback Tracy Porter intercepted Roethlisberger on the ensuing series and returned it 43 yards up the right sideline for a touchdown, the Broadway opening morphed into an outdoor party on a summer night.

It was not entirely Manning’s doing, of course. For all the frustration produced by the Steelers’ time of possession — it was 35:05 to 24:55 for the game — the Broncos’ revamped defense held them to 19 points and got the big turnover at the end. Cornerback Tracy Porter, who got the pick six, was Elway’s second-most important offseason free-agent pickup.

“They were good defensively,” Roethlisberger said. “They disguised very well. We were on the sideline talking about half the time we didn’t know what coverage they were going to.”

It might not surprise you to learn that the Steelers have had about enough of Mile High for a while.

“It’s a great place, great environment, great fans and good team,” Roethlisberger said. “I’d like to say I hope we come back here, but I hope we don’t. I hope they come back to our place because it’s a nice advantage.”

For one thing, safety Ryan Clark would be able to play then. The Steelers’ starting free safety can’t play at altitude because of a medical condition. Pittsburgh was also missing its best pass rusher, linebacker James Harrison, and its starting running back, Rashard Mendenhall.

As Manning pointed out, it’s only one game. The Broncos have an even bigger challenge in Week 2, traveling to Atlanta to play the Falcons, who beat the Chiefs in Kansas City on Sunday, 40-24.

Still, the curtain was raised at home in fine fashion. The touchdown pass to Thomas was Manning’s 400th in the NFL. (The pass to Tamme was No. 401.) Only Brett Favre (508) and Dan Marino (420) have thrown more. And Manning, clearly, isn’t done.

“There’s a lot of people that participated in that process, a lot of receivers on different teams throughout the years,” he said of the milestone.

“I’m grateful for their help. I guess you call it an individual record, but I kind of accept it on behalf of many great teammates and coaches. Dan Marino and Brett Favre are two of my favorite players of all time, two of the best quarterbacks of all time. I don’t really feel comfortable being in that company, but to be mentioned amongst them, it’s truly humbling and quite an honor and it’s not one that I take lightly.”

For the rest of the league, here’s the scary part: Manning still doesn’t think he’s all the way back.

“I’m still feeling my way out,” he said. “I still have some limitations. I think this team is still forming its identity. As you’re feeling yourself out and feeling the team out, when you can get a win in that process, that’s a nice thing. We’ve got an extremely tough schedule going on the road to Atlanta. It will be nice to go in there 1-0 as opposed to 0-1, but it’s going to be a serious test next Monday.”

No doubt. But Manning’s debut demonstrated the wisdom of the Broncos’ courtship last winter. For the first time since Elway retired almost 14 years ago, the Broncos have an elite quarterback, a field general who can take them as far as his teammates are ready to go.

Leave a comment | tags: Ben Roethlisberger, John Fox, Peyton Manning | posted in Broncos/NFL

August 27, 2012

Two weeks out, Peyton Manning looks ready

By Dave Krieger

The Broncos’ starting quarterback reminded me of something Sunday I either never knew or had forgotten. At my age, one is never sure, but I’m pretty sure Peyton Manning would call it bad preparation either way.

He reminded me that he and Lance Ball have played together before.

Ball wasn’t drafted when he came out of the Univeristy of Maryland four years ago, but the St. Louis Rams signed him to their practice squad as an undrafted free agent. They released him at the end of September and Manning’s Indianapolis Colts picked him up two weeks later, adding him to their practice squad.

On Dec. 28, the Colts activated Ball for their season finale against division rival Tennessee. Both teams had clinched playoff berths, the Titans as division champs and the Colts as a wild card. Manning started for the Colts but played only the first series. He went 7-for-7 and led his team to a touchdown.

It is perhaps worth noting that the touchdown came on a 55-yard pass play to Joseph Addai, the Colts running back. Unlike Sunday’s big play to Ball, a 38-yard rainbow up the right sideline, this was a short pass into the right flat that Addai ran the rest of the way. Still, it’s a reminder that Manning is an equal opportunity thrower — if you’re the best matchup, he’s coming your way.

Ball made his NFL debut that day, after Manning had retired for the day. He carried 13 times for 83 yards and caught one pass for five yards from Jim Sorgi.

What this means, of course, is that Ball was practicing with Manning and the Colts for most of the 2008 season. Everybody knows Manning played with Brandon Stokley and Jacob Tamme in Indianapolis and this is at least part of the calculation that puts both Stokley and Tamme on the Broncos’ final 53-man roster.

Assuming the rib injury Ball sustained in Sunday’s third preseason game isn’t too serious, I’m thinking he makes that list, too. That would leave only one possible opening at running back for Knowshon Moreno, Jeremiah Johnson or Xavier Omon, and then only if the Broncos keep four in addition to fullback Chris Gronkowski.

I could certainly be wrong about this. My record predicting the future is not that good. I nailed that they would make another Star Trek movie after Wrath of Kahn, but that’s about it.

Still, Sunday was as close as the Broncos are likely to come to a dress rehearsal for the season opener against the Steelers on Sept. 9, and Ball was part of the first-team game plan. Manning threw to him twice consecutively on the Broncos’ first touchdown drive.

The second throw, a loft so perfect up the sideline it could have been animated by Pixar, was the drive’s big play, taking the Broncos from their own 36 to the 49ers’ 26. It was also a bomb on third-and-three.

Manning’s reminder came when I asked him about that throw, which he delivered while taking a helmet to the chest. I wondered if the timing was a matter of instinct, since he couldn’t have worked on it with Ball that much.

“Well, Lance played for the Colts; he did,” Manning said.

“But in training camp we have put him outside at wide receiver a few times and have thrown that particular pattern, actually, a couple of times in training camp. So it’s always nice when you can take something you’ve worked on in practice and take it to the playing field. I thought it was a really good route and a good finish by him today.”

Manning was sharp throughout his short stint Sunday. His second touchdown pass to Eric Decker was waiting for the third-year receiver like a room service tray suspended in mid-air after Decker sold an inside fake and turned uncovered toward the left corner of the end zone.

Against last season’s No. 2 scoring defense in the NFL, Manning played one quarter, completing 10 of 12 passes for 122 yards, two touchdowns and a passer rating of 148.6. He might be ready.

“I’ve seen steady improvement since he’s gotten here,” coach John Fox said. “That’s a tribute to him, his work ethic. I think the offensive coaches, his offensive teammates, for being a first-year guy, he’s not a young player by any stretch, but to come in and learn an offense, execute an offense with the precision he has, is pretty good.”

Manning declined a victory lap.

“Well, you’ve still got to do it every week,” he said. “I thought we did some good things today. We moved the ball pretty well and we got two touchdowns. It would have been nice to have gotten three . . . .

“I thought one thing that was nice was the defense got a turnover and the offense went out there and capitalized with a touchdown as opposed to having to settle for three. That’s always big when you can feed off one another, offense and defense.”

After managing just 38 yards rushing against Pete Carroll’s Seattle defense last week, the Broncos made the ground game a point of emphasis this week. It set no records — 26 carries, 83 yards — but was at least a viable option. Rookie Ronnie Hillman, seeing his first preseason action, had a 14-yard burst for the day’s long run, and veteran starter Willis McGahee had a 12-yard inside scamper out of a two-back set.

“I don’t think there’s really any barrier with this offense,” Manning said. “What I’ve done in my past and the teams I’ve played on I think (is) really irrelevant to this year’s team. We’re still forming our identity, seeing what plays we can hang our hat on.

“I thought coach (offensive coordinator Mike) McCoy emphasized the running game today. He challenged the guys to run the ball. I thought we did that against a good defensive front. It’s still preseason. It really carries no weight once the regular season starts, but it was good to do that and answer that challenge.”

To be sure, the Broncos still have issues. In each of the last two weeks, Manning and the first team have beaten an NFC West first team, then watched Denver’s second and third teams dominated by their counterparts. The first team led Seattle 10-9, but the Seahawks won 30-10. The first team took a 17-0 lead against San Francisco, but the Niners won 29-24. I asked Fox if consecutive flacid performances by the back end of his roster concerned him.

“Yeah, it all concerns me,” he said. “That’s kind of what I do. At the end of the day, I think we made a little bit of improvement, not a lot, but last week we flung up 21, I don’t remember what it was this time, but we’ve got work to do. When we pick the 53, you can do that a lot of different ways.”

For example, linebacker Nate Irving, a third-round draft choice in 2011 playing on the second team, was run over by 49ers third-string quarterback Josh Johnson, whom he tried to arm-tackle.

Luckily, the second team won’t be called upon to play as a unit once the games begin to matter. The first-team defense had only one major lapse. That came after Fox decided, up 17-0, to try an onside kick. It might have worked, too, if Matt Willis hadn’t grabbed it before it traveled the necessary 10 yards. Still, this is something Fox wouldn’t try on a bet in that situation if the game counted.

Given their best field position of the day, the Niners scored on the next play. Tight end Vernon Davis ran by linebacker Von Miller and safety Rahim Moore was so late getting over he looked like he’d missed his bus.

Caleb Hanie was the second quarterback in, arriving with 42 seconds left in the first quarter and the Broncos up 17-7. He was unsteady at first, throwing his second pass behind Decker into the arms of former Bronco Perrish Cox, now a Niners nickel back.

But Hanie eventually found a rhythm, leading the Broncos to a touchdown in a two-minute drill just before halftime. Rookie Brock Oswieler, second in last week, was third Sunday. Again, the offense sputtered, suggesting Hanie will be the No. 2 quarterback going into the regular season unless John Elway elects to make a waiver wire claim at the end of the week, when all 32 teams must cut down to 53-man rosters.

Ideally, Osweiler would have proven able to back up Manning right away, which would have allowed the Broncos to carry only two quarterbacks on the active roster. But through three preseason games, Osweiler, a one-year starter at Arizona State, does not look ready for prime time.

Befitting a dress rehearsal, McCoy trotted out a variety of schemes and personnel packages Sunday. Manning and the first-team offense huddled during their first series, then went no-huddle in the second. They used a two-back formation with Chris Gronkowski at fullback — it produced McGahee’s 12-yard inside run — and an empty backfield set featuring three wide receivers and two tight ends.

For much of the second series, McCoy went with a three-wide look that had the veteran Stokley in the slot, where Manning used to find him in Indianapolis. They connected twice Sunday, including a balletic tip to himself by Stokley on a third-and-six he converted into a first down.

Manning and Stokley may be the only 36-year-old pass connection in the league this year, but they looked a lot like they did in 2004, when they were both 28 and Stokley caught 68 balls for 1,077 yards and 10 touchdowns.

“We wanted to do a lot better than we have in the past couple preseason games,” Stokley said. “We put some good things together. It would have been nice to score touchdowns every time we got the ball, but I thought all in all it was a lot better than the two weeks before.”

This week will be all about the problematic back end of the roster — in the game Thursday night at Arizona and in the work Elway and the front office staff does poring over the waiver wire Friday.

As for the first team, it looked ready for the curtain to rise on the regular season.

Leave a comment | tags: John Fox, Peyton Manning | posted in Broncos/NFL

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Tag Archives: Peyton Manning

Two stats suggest Broncos growing into legit contender

This just in: Peyton Manning is not a cyborg

Throw in a little defense and the Broncos look scary good

The turning point of a game, and maybe a season

Archie Manning: ‘It’s been a big transition for Peyton’

Broncos remain a work in progress

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What, you thought the Broncos would go undefeated?

An auspicious beginning

Two weeks out, Peyton Manning looks ready

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